The Howling Forge lay unnaturally silent in the pre-dawn darkness, its cavernous belly holding just a single, steady heartbeat—the rhythmic clang of Thalia's hammer striking metal.Orange light from the lone active furnace painted elongated shadows across the stone walls, transforming familiar tools into strange, watchful sentinels.
She paused between strikes, wiping sweat from her brow with the back of her hand, leaving a smudge of soot across her skin.The silence pressed against her ears like a physical thing, a stark contrast to the usual chorus of voices, hammers, and hissing quench barrels that filled the forge during daylight hours.
Thalia preferred it this way.In the emptiness, she could hear her own thoughts, even if they weren't particularly comforting companions.She lifted the hammer again, bringing it down with precise force upon the glowing metal.The impact reverberated through her bones, carrying with it the sharp edge of her worry.
Kaine's face materialized in her mind's eye—his dark eyes serious as he'd volunteered for the mission that might claim his life.What had possessed him to step forward so readily?The question haunted her, though she suspected she knew the answer.His words echoed in her memory:I don’t want to be a distraction.Especially from him.
The hammer fell harder than intended, sending sparks skittering across her workbench.She cursed under her breath, adjusting her grip.Reckless.That's what his decision had been.Utterly reckless, when Frostforge needed his skills here, when the academy would face another attack, when she—
She cut the thought short, unwilling to finish it even in the privacy of her own mind.
Her next blow carried the weight of her fear for Roran.The Isle Wardens would recognize him instantly for what he was—a storm-caller, descended from their own people but aligned against them.They would hate him for it, more than they hated ordinary Northerners or Southerners.A traitor to blood.And Roran, for all his natural skill, had limited training in the magic that ran in his veins.He'd spent his life suppressing it, hiding it, denying it.Now he was sailing directly into the territory of those who had mastered it for generations.
The metal beneath her hammer glowed brighter, as if responding to the intensity of her emotions.She turned it on the anvil, each strike deliberate despite the turmoil in her chest.
Beyond the walls of Frostforge, beyond the icy waters where Kaine and Roran now sailed, lay Verdant Port—or what remained of it.Her mother.Mari.The thought of them twisted like a knife between her ribs.Were they alive?Had they escaped the Warden attack?Or had they perished like so many others, their bodies left to the tide while their home burned?No messages had reached Frostforge from the Southern port city, no refugees who recognized her family's name.The uncertainty gnawed at her more fiercely than any confirmed loss could have.
Thalia set the hammer down, flexing fingers that had grown stiff with tension.On her workbench, chunks of the silver-blue ore gleamed with an inner light that seemed to pulse in rhythm with her heart.She'd taken to calling it “glacenite” in her mind—a nod to its ice-blue color and its strange coolness to the touch.When her hand hovered near it, a soft hum vibrated through her fingertips, unlike anything she'd felt from traditional metals.
The ore had resisted her first attempts at forging.Traditional ice-metal patterns, which she'd mastered years ago, slid away from the glacenite like oil on water.The cryomancy she channeled through her frost gloves dissipated before it could weave into the metal's lattice, the enchantment refusing to take hold.
She'd spent hours adjusting the forge temperature, modifying the quenching ritual, altering the folding pattern—all without success.The failures accumulated like the ashes around her furnace, each one stoking her frustration.But beneath that frustration burned something stronger: determination.This ore was their only hope against the black metal.She would not be defeated by its stubbornness.
Thalia lifted a fragment of the glacenite, studying it as if the metal itself might whisper its secrets.The hum intensified, vibrating up her arm.In that moment, an idea crystallized—perhaps the issue wasn't in the forging technique, but in the timing of the enchantment.
She returned the ore to the crucible, watching intently as it melted into liquid silver-blue, swirling with internal luminescence.As it heated, she prepared her frost gloves, flexing her fingers within the enchanted leather.
Traditional ice-metal required the cryomancy to be applied after the metal had fully cooled, an external enchantment layered onto the finished product.But this ore was different.It seemed almost alive, responsive to her touch in ways that suggested an inherent magic of its own.
What if the cryomancy needed to be introduced at the exact moment of transition?Not after cooling, not while fully molten, but in that precise instant when solid became liquid, when structure was most malleable?
Thalia watched the crucible with unwavering focus, sensing rather than seeing the subtle shifts in the metal's composition.There—the exact moment approached.She plunged her gloved hands over the crucible, fingers splayed, and released a concentrated surge of cryomancy.
The metal flared with blinding silver-blue light.Energy crackled up her arms, not painful but intensely present, like diving into ice-cold water.She felt the currents anchor, the hum of the ore deepening to a steady, satisfied pulse.The cryomancy didn't dissipate this time—it was absorbed, integrated, transformed into something new.
Ice-glacenite.
Exhaustion pulled at her limbs, but triumph burned hotter.She worked quickly now, pouring the molten alloy into the mold she'd prepared.Even before it fully cooled, she could see this attempt was different.The metal retained a subtle glow, and the familiar patterns of ice-metal enchantment were visible beneath its surface, but altered.More fluid, more organic, as if the magic had found its natural home rather than being forced into place.
Hours passed in a blur of hammer strikes, each one releasing faint sparks of pale light.Thalia folded the metal, drawing out its strength, shaping it with a care usually reserved for the finest ceremonial blades.She chose a slightly curved design, reminiscent of the Warden blade but with a distinctly Southern hilt design.A deliberate choice, a statement of opposition.
The final quenching came at dawn, steam rising around her in a white cloud as the heated blade met cold water.The metal sang—a clear, high note that seemed to hang in the air long after it should have faded.When she lifted it from the quench barrel, droplets clung to its surface in perfect beads, reluctant to surrender their connection to the blade.
For the first time in days, a faint smile touched Thalia's lips.She ran her fingertips along the blade's edge, feeling the faint thrum of energy beneath its surface—a living weapon, as responsive to her touch as a well-trained hound.The edge was impossibly sharp, the balance perfect.But the true test remained: would it hold against the black metal that had destroyed every other Frostforge weapon?
She sheathed the blade carefully, her body suddenly aware of the night's labor.Her shoulders ached, her eyes burned from forge smoke and lack of sleep.Yet the weight of the new sword at her hip filled her with a lightness she hadn't felt since watching Kaine and Roran sail away.
***
The Crystalline Plateau stretched before Thalia like a sheet of hammered silver in the early morning light, frost-crusted and waiting for the day's first footprints.She emerged from the keep's shadow, the new ice-glacenite blade at her left hip, its weight unfamiliar yet comforting.In her right hand, wrapped carefully in thick cloth, she carried the captured Isle Warden blade, its black metal seeming to absorb rather than reflect the dawn.
To the south, the burned skeleton of the amphitheater rose against the pale sky, a stark reminder of the attack that had taken so many lives.Golems moved among the charred timbers, their ice-metal joints gleaming as they methodically cleared debris, each movement accompanied by the soft crunch of frost beneath their heavy feet.
Movement near the eastern edge of the plateau caught her eye—a solitary figure flowing through combat forms with fluid precision.Brynn.Even at this distance, Thalia recognized the distinctive rhythm of her footwork, the perfect balance that had cemented her place at the top of their class.Predictable as the sunrise itself, Brynn maintained her training regimen regardless of other duties, claiming the dawn hours when most of Frostforge still slumbered.
As Thalia approached, she noticed the odd asymmetry in Brynn's movements—a compensation for mismatched weapons.One blade gleamed with the familiar blue-silver sheen of ice-steel, while the other bore the warmer, golden tone of ice-titanium, newly forged to replace what the Warden attack had destroyed.
Brynn executed a complex turn, both blades slicing the air in tight arcs, her breath forming small clouds that lingered in the still air.As she moved, she caught sight of Thalia.
